


meet me in this broken place

by lettersfromnowhere



Series: Starmora Oneshots [6]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers 4 speculation, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, am I the only one who thinks there are very strong Starmora/Scarletvision parallels in IW?, because I wanted an excuse for Wanda and Peter to interact, do it for the prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 18:22:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15646347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: In which Wanda and Peter find themselves in oddly similar nightmares they can't seem to wake from, and the companionship of mutually grieving individuals proves to be a comfort.





	meet me in this broken place

**Author's Note:**

> Background: this is somewhat of an Avengers 4 speculatory (not a word, but I'm using it anyway) fic. In this timeline, everyone who's been ashed has been brought back already, but the rest haven't. Consequently, this leaves both Peter and Wanda without their love interests.
> 
> This exists primarilu because i just really, really wanted to make them interact. And there ARE parallels. Lots of parallels. 
> 
> Title is from "Without You" by Ashes Remain.

Sitting together, they appear little alike; she with her delicate frame sheltering so much power and stoic face concealing a lifetime of loss, and he, his built form, ordinarily human in its rare vulnerability, shuddering with sobs. They sit on the abandoned terrace, not saying a word as the humid midday air surrounds them like a silencing cloak. The sun’s too bright for times like these, when all the light is gone from eyes and lives. The relentless beating of the far-off star’s light upon the earth feels insensitive, as if the sun should have known to hide away on a day like this. They glance at each other for a brief moment, averting gazes as quickly as they’d met.

 

They don’t speak, but they can read similar stories in each other’s faces. They’ve lost people before, over and over again. It isn’t a new feeling. But before, they grieved for the disappearance of their past – for a faded era, a lost childhood – and in other times, they’d lamented the loss of the present. This time, themselves snatched from the jaws of death, they mourn the futures they’d lost the moment the pulse had gone from their lovers’ hearts. Silently, they commiserate, sharing the burdens they alone have been forced to shoulder.

 

“What am I going to do if…” she starts, not talking to anyone particular, but trails off.

 

“I don’t wanna think about it,” he says, his response unasked for but not unwelcome.

 

“I don’t either.”

 

They don’t want to imagine a world without the ones they love, but – even with their teammates working around the clock, making and discarding endless plans to save them – they realize now that maybe their good fortune had been exhausted by their own returns to life. They are left with no choice but to venture blindly into a bleak future without the ones whose sides they never thought they’d leave.

 

“What are we going to do?” she asks, too weary to conceal her worry.

 

“I guess…we just have to keep going,” he says numbly, but it’s plain as day that he doesn’t believe a word out of his own mouth.

 

“What is there for us in a future without them?” she asks, rhetorically but not entirely so, and plays with the hem of her jacket. It’s frayed with the trauma of the past days, looking about as battered and torn as she feels.

 

“Don’t know.” He shrugs. “I wish I still knew how to hope that I’d see her again.”

 

“Isn’t that the problem, though?” she asks, pursing her lips in painful irony. “None of us knows how to hope for the best anymore. We try to fix things, not believing that anything we do is going to work.”

 

He ponders her statement, turns it over in his mind – it _is_ their problem, he realizes. They are working tirelessly towards an end they all believe to be futile. Yes, they’ve accomplished three-quarters of what they set out to do. But it doesn’t feel like a figure to celebrate when the other quarter of the equation determines the fate of the people they cherish most.

 

Life without love feels like a string of unforeseen heartbreaks, failed plans, and dashed hopes. And none of them wants to allow themselves to hope that they have a chance to change anything.

 

“You ever feel…his presence in a room, or something weird like that?” he asks, staring off into the distance aimlessly.

 

“Sometimes,” she admits. “When it’s quiet. Or when I smell things…that remind me of him.”

 

“Whenever I’m about to do something stupid, I can almost hear her yelling at me,” he tells her with a faint chuckle. “I think that’s what I miss the most.”

 

“Being yelled at?” she looks at him, half curious and half confused.

 

“Nah. Having someone who cared enough to yell at me when I was about to make terrible life choices,” he clarifies, the ghost of a smile beginning to form on his face. When he doesn’t look so utterly miserable, she thinks, he’s intriguing to look at. He radiates a sort of joie de vivre, or at least she imagines he would, extrapolating upon his expression, if they’d met under different circumstances.

 

“I thought I’d been truly alone before, but it never felt like it does now,” she says.

 

“Me, too,” he agrees, “even though I’m not. I…still have the others.”

 

“So do I, but…”

 

The inevitable ‘but’, the strings-attached nature of both their lives, hangs in the air.

 

_But…ten people can’t replace the one I lost._

_But…they can’t rebuild the future I lost._

_But…I don’t know if I’ll ever find another._

There’s never a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in this life, where everything they’ve built stands on the point of a blade ready to tip at the tiniest shift of circumstance. Anything could change at a moment’s notice; they’ve accepted that, the reality of their own mortality, by now – they’ve had to. But neither had seen before that the single best and single worst thing they could have done to upset the carefully haphazard arrangements they’d made of their lives was to fall in love.

 

After all, in a world where loss was an everyday occurrence, giving themselves something – someone – to lose was the most dangerous mistake they could make.

 

They pass hour upon hour out on the terrace, occasionally puncturing the thick silence with conversation, but mostly content to sit in a silence that is the worst kind of companionable. They’re called in every so often, consulted about plans neither think would ever work. Even after nightfall they remain there, somehow finding the lonely terrace and the companionship of someone who _gets it_ the greatest possible comfort.

 

Maybe tomorrow could bring a reunion, or maybe it will bring only more disappointment. Which, neither knows, but they scarcely dare to hope for the former.

 

Before, when each had looked to the future, they’d seen a life full of the ones they’d lost. Now, tomorrow was a faceless entity, evading their speculations. The future would come as it pleased. For now, they had grief and futile efforts.

But a shared burden, both now saw, was easier to bear. 


End file.
